Reflections of Margaret Atwood’s Dystopias in the Pandemic of 2020
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Theory and Practice in English Studies (THEPES) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://anglistika.phil.muni.cz/media/3286504/thepes_9_2020_1-2_7.pdf |
| Keywords | Margaret Atwood; Oryx and Crake; The Year ofthe Flood; dystopia; pandemic; COVID-19; leadership; ecofeminism |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The paper focuses on Margaret Atwood’s novels Oryx and Crakeand The Year of the Floodand considers ways in which the pandemic of her dystopian world may, to various degrees, serve as a reflection of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020. The setting of both novels is the same dystopian world, however, they each present different ideological takes on dealing with a pandemic. The paper analyses the creation of Crakers as the new humanoid species, which are supposed to inhabit the earth in its post-pandemic state. It reflects not only political andsocial structures Atwood borrowed from the real-world, but also types of behavior that somepolitical national leaders currently display. While the first novel addresses the issuesof power, exploitation, and the God complex; The Year of the Flood, with its two female characters, investigates dealingwith the pandemic via the lens of ecofem-inism, ecology, nature, and sustainability. Conversely to Crake’s elitist megalo-maniac ideas that leave the world and its state largely out of the discussion,in the second novel, Atwood connects to the ecology of the post-pandemic world and focuses on ways of understanding it from the natural, rather than ideological standpoint. The paper considers these opposing viewpoints and shows defamil-iarized versions reflected in the current state of the real world. In relation to that, correlations between fictional and real-life dichotomies of masculine and femi-nine perspectives on handling the pandemic both in the real world as well as in the novel are also discussed. |
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